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by bluebarbet 70 days ago
It is not trivial to get FOSS Linux onto a write-protected Intel Chromebook, compared to a Windows netbook of yore. It is harder still to get it onto an ARM Chromebook or Android tablet. PostmarketOS is a bit simpler (or at least better documented) but it is not a full Linux distro.

Installing a fully-fledged FOSS OS on low-end general-purpose computing hardware is getting harder. Certainly for the non-techies who have to be part of FOSS if it is to survive.
1 comments
yjftsjthsd-h 69 days ago
I think it's better and worse in slightly different ways. On the one hand, yeah a Chromebook won't let you touch the default OS without switching to developer mode, and won't let you install a new OS without disabling the write-protect screw or firmware option. On the other hand, every ChromeOS device allows you to do exactly that, and then you can run whatever you want and you should have at least some support for upstream Linux because ChromeOS upstreams their drivers. (I will happily agree that the Android device situation is awful.)

> PostmarketOS is a bit simpler (or at least better documented) but it is not a full Linux distro.

By what definition is PMOS not a "full" distro? It's Alpine plus some extra stuff, including device tweaks and out-of-the-box desktop environments.

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bluebarbet 69 days ago
>By what definition is PMOS not a "full" distro?

Can it run Sway window manager? Honest question.

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yjftsjthsd-h 69 days ago
Sure? Either standalone ( https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Sway ) or with sxmo ( https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Sxmo ) which is probably preferred on phones.
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bluebarbet 69 days ago
Interesting. I will reconsider (some of) my priors in the light of this new information.
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